Tutorials
 Dr. Athanassios Boulis Senior Researcher NICTA |
Title A practical guide to MAC implementation and general MAC design guidelines for Body Area Networks Abstract The tutorial will expose attendees to issues with MAC implementation from a
specifications document, and to generic design issues with BAN MAC. It will show
how implementation and design are tightly linked in practice, despite the theoretical
ideal of clean separation. It will offer practical advice on MAC implementation; it will
examine common pitfalls with MAC design, and propose ways to guard against them.
Modelling and various abstractions will be studied, as well as different ways to
implement the event-driven state machines that MACs are. This will be a hands-on Intended Audience The tutorial is intended for students, researchers and practitioners in the area of Wireless low-power Networks, such as Wireless Sensor Networks and Body Area Networks. Desired background knowledge: familiarity with generic MAC concepts such as contention access (e.g. CSMA/CA) and scheduled access (e.g., TDMA), exposure to basic communications theory and physical layer terms such as modulation and RSSI. Biography Athanassios Boulis is a senior researcher at NICTA, the Australian research centre of excellence in ICT. At NICTA he works in a BAN-related large-scale project called Human Performance Improvement (HPI). Within HPI he is the leading researcher in BAN MAC design. NICTA-HPI is part of the IEEE 802.15.6 standards task group that shapes the future standard on BAN. Dr. Boulis is also the lead architect and software engineer behind the Castalia open source simulator. Castalia has been in development since 2006 (gone public 2007) and has a wide base of users in the wireless sensor networks community. In 2009 Castalia has been enriched with the BAN-specific channel models developed within HPI and aspires to be a major tool in evaluating BAN MAC proposals. Dr. Boulis' other research interest include development of Wireless Sensor Network applications, distributed algorithms for WSN, simulation and modelling, and programming abstractions for networked embedded systems. Dr. Boulis received his PhD and M.S. diplomas at the Electrical Engineering Dept. of UCLA conducting research on wireless sensor networks under the guidance of Prof. Mani Srivastava. He received his B.S. diploma from the Electronic and Computer Engineering Dept. at Technical University of Crete, Creece. Description of the tutorial in PDF can be found here |
 Dr. Nikola Serbedzija Professor Fraunhofer FIRST, Berlin |
Title "What you Like is What you Get" - Engineering Highly Personalized User-centric Systems Abstract As technology evolves with computing intelligence being integrated into the "fabric of everyday life", non-explicit man-machine interaction gains in significance. Seamless and near-invisible devices are pervading our environment, sensing our presence, needs, mood, and intentions and delivering services adapted to us and our context of use. A new generation of "empathic" systems is under development with ultimate goal to understand users' situation in order to function supportively, maximizing utilization, comfort and safety whilst minimizing explicit user intervention. Integration of such computer systems in real-life settings calls for new methods that support "interface" to human senses and contextual adaptation. "What you like is what you get" principle is dramatically changing the human-computer interaction landscape. Equipped with numerous sensor devices, connected to body area network, that observe users in a concrete setting, smart systems are able to derive users' emotional, cognitive and physical state as well as social context and adapt their functioning accordingly. This tutorial presents a systematic approach to develop control interfaces that can expand present systems with awareness-rich behaviour. The special emphasis is on the use of this technology within small and smart devices connected to the body area network. The major methods, structures and design principles of pervasive adaptive interaction are explained in detail. Followed by the techniques used to structure the software into components and services that observe users and their surroundings, evaluate psycho-physiological users' constructs and influence both the user and the surrounding, taking into account the system's goals. To illustrate the approach, a "mood player" demonstration shows in a real-life setting how the boundaries between man and empathic systems are diminishing. The tutorial is meant for wide audiences that want to gain a better understanding of new developments and future trends in pervasive adaptive systems. Crossing the discipline barriers, the tutorial brings different software engineering perspectives, at the same time tackling issues relevant to life-sciences. Biography Nikola Serbedzija works at Fraunhofer FIRST where he is responsible for new research activities and innovative technology. His major research areas are: Pervasive Adaptation, Ubiquitous Computing, Middleware Architectures, and Internet Programming. The major application areas are empathic systems, ambient assistance, embedded systems, real-time systems and e-learning. As a principle designer he led the developments of a number of practical systems in vehicular, in- and out-door infrastructures, e-commerce and e-learning domain. Description of the tutorial in PDF can be found here |
